rowing

After my morning training on Thursday, I worked from home, then took the 15:21 train to Vienna airport and flew to Toulouse with a short stop in Frankfurt. Arrived after 11pm.

Friday was an interesting day. Meetings from 9 to 12, then a nice lunch in the garden of La Flambée, at the end of the runway of Toulouse-Blagnac Airport. We just didn’t have time enough for the ice cream desert. Then meetings again, and then running to catch a flight home.

The flight was delayed so I got my delayed ice cream.

Then the Swiss flight to Zurich. They served swiss chocolate ice cream as a snack. I had a coffee with it.

I felt well when I left the plane but the terminal building was heated to about 30 degrees C, and I suddenly started to feel bad. I had the feeling I would either faint or throw up or do both at the same time. With my hand in front of my mouth I rushed to a toilet as fast as I could. I found a toilet about 500m from my gate.

Interestingly, it was a little cooler there. I removed my tie and jacket, and I felt better immediately.

Probably a case of low blood pressure or something, combined with getting up quickly to leave the plane, and the heat in the terminal building.

Uneventful flight to Vienna. Delayed arrival at 11pm.

I was home in bed by 1:45 am.

Then up at 8 to join breakfast with Romana and the kids, and headed to the rowing club around 9:15.

Romana took the girls out in a quad. I took the single. The plan was

Row steady state

Do a 1000m with the following race plan: Fast start, then focus on technique for 600m, then all out in the final 300m

Somehow the 1000m didn’t go entirely according to plan. I did the focus on technique but I ended up doing a slow motion 29spm, not the 32spm I had hoped for. There was a tail wind building up from no wind at the start to medium sized waves at 700m into the test.

The stats above are from the Garmin. I forgot the Wahoo heart rate belt so I took the Garmin belt. But after the 2km warming up I realized I had to pair it again with the Garmin. So add 2km to the session.

A 3:55 effort with average stroke rate of 29.9. Again: Not good, but good enough given the circumstances. I believe that doing these 1km things regularly gets you used to the thing.

Finally some time for proper L4 rate ladders in the single. It was a drizzly morning, but not too cold. The lake was rowable, but I preferred to go to the castle, where I found super flat water and no wind. The cost is having to steer through a few narrow and sharp turns, which inevitably slow you down and remove the focus from technique.

However, given that I would be rowing in a forest canyon, along a medieval castle and some very beautiful rocks, that was an easy price to pay.

I used the RIM app to keep track of my technique. I like to watch “stroke efficiency”. It’s a bit of a funny metric the way it is defined, and I can’t really get a hold of why, but it seems to correlate strongly with what I believe I should be improving in my sculling. It’s also a sensitive metric so you can monitor it from stroke to stroke and usually when it changes I can understand why. So the goal was to have stroke efficiency above 2 for as many strokes as possible.

I chose to row 4min/3min/2min/1min at 18/20/22/24spm. Here are the pretty pictures:

Google map trajectory with HR dataHR and SPM

Here are the RIM analysis pictures:

The conclusion: Yes I did succeed in working on technique.

Here are the data:
dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
2194_____|_12:00____|_2:44.1|136|18.8|9.7|warmup
8298_____|_40:01____|_2:24.7|158|20.5|10.1|Main set
2228_____|_12:33____|_2:49.0|151|19.2|9.2|Cool down
0236_____|_01:59____|_4:12.4|138|17.1|7.0|rest meters
12955____|_06:33____|_2:34.1|152|19.6|9.9|_Total

Not quite a good training in the eight. I am advocating for doing steady state and technique exercises before doing any “real” training, but we have some team members who don’t believe in the training effect of steady state.

So we started doing a number of 2 minute pieces with 3 minutes rest, but half way the second interval our nr 2 seat called a stop and gave his opinion on the quality of our rowing. After that we did steady state and technique, mainly rowing in 4s, with 4 holding balance, and rowing with pauses during the recovery.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

Wednesday

Tuesday was an evening training, which was followed by a restaurant dinner for a team celebration (work related). In bed at 11pm, alarm clock at 5:30 to be in time for our morning training in the double.

The plan was 2x(250m/R1 + 500m/R2 + 750m/R3 + 500m/R2 + 250m/R1)/R5 and we were rowing alongside another double. These trainings work best with a sparring partner. The problem was that we didn’t realize that if you mix distance exercise and time based rest, and the two boats are not equally fast, the speedcoaches/CrewNerd will start to get out of sync. Good training anyway.

Radek and I were the slower double. However, because of working on technique we didn’t go higher than 30spm, while Eda + Ludek were doing the shorter pieces at 35spm and the longer ones at 26spm. So you could say that we were rowing more effective. 🙂

Last weekend there was a frenzy of activity on our club, because we were host to three Prague clubs visiting Brno for the youth regatta. As our club’s chairman and I were enjoying a cup of coffee on the balcony overlooking the club grounds and the lake, the best place for smart-ass comments and other wisdom from Masters rowers, our eyes fell upon this neat little trailer:

Our club owns a big trailer, which needs to be towed by a driver with a “big” driving license (class E in CZ, not sure if this makes sense on the other side of the pond). I have been thinking about buying a small trailer which can be towed by a normal car, for towing around doubles and singles, for example for our Masters races, or when our youth has to go to Prague for some selection races, or for a mini training camp at the end of the winter, where we would load a few pairs and singles and find a place where the ice has already melted.

This particular trailer caught my attention because the smart design. It can carry 9 boats, with space for 3 fours on the top. The oar container is long enough to fit long oars. We asked the owner about the price and it doesn’t sound too expensive.

So my mind is now racing through the options, because I see a win-win situation for the club and myself:

I buy the trailer, park it at the club and “rent” it to them for a very fair price. Pros: Clear ownership. I control who takes it and who doesn’t. In a year or two I may sell it to the club for a reduced price. Contra: I have to take care of all repairs, make sure those who drive it are properly insured, etc.

I lend money to the club to buy the trailer. The club pays me back in two years (without interest). Pros: I don’t have the burden of ownership. Contra: I have to coordinate with the club about who uses it, when.

Club buys it itself. Contra: Club needs to invest in boats and in the boat house.

Any other thoughts?

Today’s training

Today’s training was “limping on two purposes”. I thought yesterday’s training in the eight would be steady state, which would have made sense given it was the first proper training together. It turned out to be a 20 strokes on, 15 strokes off affair at stroke rates between 28 and 38. Hm.

Normally Monday is for fast intervals in the single, but I really have the feeling I need to work on technique. On the other hand, I didn’t do the planned “hard 1km” on Saturday.

Short summary:
dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
1999_____|_11:17____|_2:49.3|136|20.6|8.6|warmup
7028_____|_37:41____|_2:40.9|147|21.0|8.9|Main set
1268_____|_07:16____|_2:51.9|138|19.9|8.8|Cool down
10295____|_56:14____|_2:43.9|144|20.7|8.8|_Total

I noticed that the RIM app meter counter gave me 10.7km, while I was sure it was closer to 10. The numbers I am giving here are from the RIM app, but after I recalculated the distance rowed using the coordinates from the TCX file. It was still 15m more than what I recorded on the Garmin, but that’s close enough. Both Garmin and RIM recorded a 3:49 time for the 1km. Happy with that. Conditions were cross/slight tail wind and some waves in the second 500m. I would have liked to rate up a bit more, but I was focusing on technique and nice long strokes, and that was a higher priority.

I want to be sub 3:40 in neutral weather as a stretch goal.

RIM analysis of today’s typical strokesSPM and HR from RIMHR and Pace according to RIMHR and Pace according to the Garmin

My sister and brother-in-law are in Vienna for a theater festival. Romana had to get up early because of the Junior Regatta. In fact, she was so nervous she was up at 5am. So I found myself on the erg at 6am. Did 5km steady state, then the CTC, then another 5km steady state.

The CTC is 2 minutes all out. I figured I could do 630m if in Personal Best form, which would be 1:34 pace. The plan was to row it as the first 2 minutes of a 1km row, though. I knew I wasn’t in PB form. So 616m it was (1:37 pace). It’s interesting how much further a 2 minute is than a 500m.

Had a great time in Vienna, visiting Schoenbrunn and the zoo.

Sunday

Spent most of the day at the rowing club. The International Junior Regatta was held in Brno this weekend, so I had to see Lenka perform (2nd in the B final in the girls 4x-, didn’t make it to A or B final in the double) and spend some time socializing with the rowing crowd.

After the races, we went out in an eight. Slightly different constellation than the winning eight of last weekend:

But the core team is the same. We missed a cox, so we grabbed one of our lightweight pair to cox us. Interesting to be coxed by a guy who just the weekend before has rowed the World Cup in the pair, and will be representing the Czech Republic at the European Championships in Poznan.

We Masters Eigth always have a lot of self-criticism during the training, mainly about rushing the slide. What was interesting was that the cox just praised us. We are apparently in sync, sending the boat nicely, etc. Good to hear that for a change …

Went out in the double with Radek today. He’s a self-taught sculler and he thinks he’s not good, but in fact he’s an eager learner and a pretty good rower.

As we are racing together in two weeks, I decided we would do some rate ladders. We would do 1 minute on, 1 minute off, the “on” minutes starting at low rate and gradually increasing.

In the first run there was tailwind, but there also were pretty big waves in the second half of the lake, so we stopped at 28spm in the tailwind part. When we turned around we discussed technique a bit and we agreed to focus on “hands away” and try to get it right >70% of the strokes. We succeeded. The wind gradually calmed down during the practice but we weren’t able to take the stroke rate much above 30. Still, I think this was a great success given it was the first time we were pulling hard together.

After the two sets of “1 minute” we did start practice, and then we fartlekked back to the finish, turned around and rowed to our boathouse. A very nice session.